venison summer sausage and hot sticks question

I am looking at making some summer sausage and hot sticks within the next few weeks. My question is I have a 3 gallon bucket of pork fat from a fresh hog and I am wondering if I can add it to the mixture of ground venison to act as a binding agent for both of these or if I need to add something different to bond them together?

So I made an extra 4lbs of venison to make total of 9 lbs added 6lbs of pork butt. I added 30 scoops of seasoning and 15 scoops of cure. This made 5 tubes of sausage they are in the fridge to finish the curing process and will smoke them tomorrow. I'm going to smoke 4 and put one in the oven to see what the difference will be in flavor so far they look good.

Thanks all for the responses, I am on spring break and just took some venison out of the freezer now to get me some pork shoulder so I can make some good food over the next few days. I will post some pics once I have a finished product.

Recipes for summer sausage I have seen call for a finishing temp anywhere from 145 to 160. I test to the low to mid 150's with an internal thermometer to be safe. I do run a small fan on a speed control to maintain uniform in box temps, this moving air also does get to the finishing temps quicker once the heat is increased to do so. I also add encapsulated citric acid to get more tang to the sausage. No deer for me this year and did a mix of different sausages using beef chuck and pork butt roast. Had summer, bologna, polish and jerky from that.

I only use pork shoulder (butt roast.) The way I look at it is there is plenty of fat on the pork shoulder. The last thing you want is greasy sausage. Ever bite into the cheap stuff you see at Fleet Farm or Walmart? Soft... greasy... not much flavor... nasty!.

My percentage is 2/3 venison to 1/3 pork. If you want to improve the flavor replace some of the venison with trimmings from a black angus chuck roast. When I say improve flavor I just mean with the beef added you get some "beef flavor" in your summer sausage. Don't get me wrong using venison is fine. My wife likes it better when I add the beef.

Eyeman has it right on with the smoking temps. Smoke at 100 degrees open vents 1-2 hours to surface dry the casings, add smoke with 1/4 vents open at 120 or less for 4-6 hours and finish at 175-180 closed vents until internal is 152. 152 degrees is a bit on the low side. Okay to go to 158 degrees just be carful. Once you get to 160 degrees you start to lose fat real quick. I'v made the mistake of bumping up the temp on my gas smoker to finish off and ruined a batch to the extent I threw it out. Low and slow is the key. If your using the standard 2 1/2" fibrous casing you should be in the 10-14 hour range for smoking time.